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October 2014: 9 Free SQL Server online trainings from Pragmatic Works

Reporting Services has become the backbone of information distribution for many businesses. It's vital then you have a good understanding of the configuration manager, as the choices you make here can affect your entire reporting infrastructure. Topics such as Scale-Out deployments, encryption keys, and service accounts will be covered. In addition we'll take a deep dive into the Report Manager. You'll see how security affects the management of reports, how to schedule reports to run automatically, and how to use data driven subscriptions to effectively meet the needs of multiple users without the overhead of multiple reports. Finally, you'll see how to use both report snapshots and the report cache to minimize the impact on your data servers, return reports faster, and create an audit trail when needed.

Instructor: Ronald DameronIf you work in an organization that is finding it increasingly difficult to allow SQL Server DBAs 24x7x365 sysadmin access to your Production servers, then I think you will find this session very interesting. Attendees will learn how to define a permission set with a single script that allows database administrators to do routine work without sysadmin permission and how to elevate permissions quickly to respond to production emergencies. Attendees will leave this session with a complete script that provides the minimum necessary access database administrators require to maintain the database server without granting access to business data. In addition, I’ll talk about our real world experience with reduced permissions.

Instructor: Bradley SchachtPerformance tuning the Microsoft BI stack is a daunting task. It’s even more difficult when you don’t know where to look. Without being able to properly monitor performance metrics of your SSIS package and SSAS cubes it’s impossible to be able to determine where to start tuning. There are a few great tools at our disposal for diagnosing a problem’s source including Performance Monitor (Perf Mon) and running traces (or extended events). In this session Bradley will walk you through how to use these tools to monitor the performance of SSIS and SSAS to determine whether things like memory or disk are the problem or if the server is fine and you just need to redesign!

Issue a "SELECT {data} FROM {myTable}" statement and users need to trust the data returned is accurate. What happens when multiple processes access the same data? What happens further if one of those process is an UPDATE or even a DELETE statement? How about if both processes will be updating that data? Understanding Isolation in SQL Server is paramount in ensuring data integrity in your system. We will cover the different levels of isolation and how they impact what a user views when accessing the data at a given point-in-time by reviewing locking and lock escalation.

Building BI solutions with Power Pivot is an excellent option for technical resources to quickly build out proof of concept solutions or for business users to self-serve their analytical needs without waiting for technical resources for assistance. This session will review options to scale Power Pivot solutions that have become critical to the organization and need to scale to increasing amounts of data and users. Power Pivot for SharePoint, Analysis Services Tabular, and O365 Power BI will be reviewed and demoed to understand what they can bring to the table to increase scalability.

Instructor: Mitchell PearsonSo you have developed SSIS packages and your now banging your head against the wall on how to get the performance increased. Stop by this session and I will share some of my tips and tricks on how to properly set the Buffer size and engine threads, as well as go over how threading in SSIS works. I will also share with you some common mistakes that are made when picking the wrong source or destination driver and some helpful components you can use to reduce the number of operations and get your packages on the right track.

Instructor: Gareth SwanepoelIf you are a production DBA and have contemplated what Windows Azure SQL Database is, then this session is for you! I will show you how SQL Server works in the Windows Azure SQL Database world. We will run through the simple process of configuring a Windows Azure SQL database. We will investigate the similarities and differences between on premises SQL Server and Windows Azure SQL Databases. We will even look into the DR, HA, monitoring and performance tuning options available with Windows Azure.

Instructor: Alan FaulknerA journey through best practices in relation to scalable SQL Server Analysis Services cube design. From dimension design to SSAS engine internals we will explore SSAS multidimensional design patterns that will take you through steps to assist in getting your SSAS cubes better optimized to better match the needs of your organization. After this session you will be able to take these performance design patterns and apply them to new and existing cubes to tune your SSAS cube environment.

Instructor: Jason StrateMicrosoft's Parallel Data Warehouse utilizes a distributed SQL Server environment. In order to properly leverage this environment, developers and query writers must have an understanding of the underlying distribution theory. This distribution theory governs how data is distributed and plays a key role on returning results. In this sessions, we'll review the rules that comprise PDW's distribution theory with demonstrations on how these rules function on PDW. Attendees can expect to learn the rules that comprise distribution with a clear understanding of their impact on data distribution and query execution. * Outline each of the rules for PDW's distribution theory * Provide an understanding of the rules and how they affect query execution * Demonstrate how the rules effect data distribution